Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is charging former President Joe Biden and his top aides with shattering constitutional limits on the presidential pardon power by approving them with an autopen instead of Biden’s own signature.
Good morning.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 8, 2025
Biden’s autopen pardons ought to be declared null and void. pic.twitter.com/8sp3GolA9x
𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐙: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐔𝐃 𝐈𝐍 𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘
— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) September 8, 2025
Cruz just dropped a nuke in Congress — and it’s something we’ve all suspected: Biden wasn’t really signing those pardons, those executive orders, those… pic.twitter.com/MekRWXtebd
Cruz wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi stating that there is a list of "core constitutional requirements" that are necessary to meet in granting pardons, and the use of the autopen likely sidestepped those guardrails. The letter was obtained by Fox News Digital.
Towards the end of his presidency, Joe Biden allegedly commuted the sentences of 1,500 inmates convicted of non-violent drug offenses, as well as pardoning 39 others. A month later, another 2,500 inmates got their sentences commuted, the most ever by a President in a single day.
Senator Cruz argued that clemency was granted "based on broad criteria rather than case-by-case evaluations, and at least some were signed using an autopen of then-President Biden’s signature." He offered to assist Bondi in her ongoing investigation into the Biden administration's abuse of the autopen.
"These core Constitutional requirements, considerations, and expectations" of case-by-case evaluations rather than broad criteria, "were demolished in the final months of the Biden administration for partisan and personal motives by President Biden, his family, and his top officials," Cruz argued. He argued that the Constitution requires the President to personally and directly grant pardons, rather than indirectly. The final pardons issued under the Biden administration and signed by the autopen were indirect and, therefore, invalid.
Everyone involved in the process — government officials purporting to issue a pardon, the person to whom it is being granted, judicial and law enforcement officials, and most of all the American people — should have absolute confidence a pardon was granted at the president’s explicit direction.
Cruz's letter comes after an Axios report that found emails from Biden administration officials expressing concerns about how the former President's team was making pardons and their frequent use of the autopen. Senator Cruz argued that those emails show that the former White House "implemented a process that separated the President from officials responsible for signing pardons on his behalf." Biden officials "could not know if they were doing so at the President’s direction, either on a case-by-case basis or as a matter of criteria."
The reports risk a "constitutional crisis in which the other branches and the American people cannot have faith that the President’s Article 2 pardon power was legitimately deployed."
If the integrity of the clemency process was broken by Biden officials, such that the relevant actions were not taken at the President’s direction, the status of the pardons and commutations would at a minimum be cast into doubt, and the officials involved in approving and using the autopens should be held accountable.